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Category: Climate Change

Scientists say it’s ‘fatally foolish’ to not study catastrophic climate outcomes

Scientists say it’s ‘fatally foolish’ to not study catastrophic climate outcomes

Inside Climate News reports: As global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, some climate scientists say it’s time to start paying more attention to the most extreme, worst-case outcomes, including the potential for widespread extinctions, mass climate migration and the disintegration of social and political systems. “Facing a future of accelerating climate change while blind to worst-case scenarios is naive risk management at best and fatally foolish at worst,” an international team of researchers wrote this week in a Perspective…

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Climate change: Are we already passed the point of no return?

Climate change: Are we already passed the point of no return?

The Observer reports: The publication of Bill McGuire’s latest book, Hothouse Earth, could not be more timely. Appearing in the shops this week, it will be perused by sweltering customers who have just endured record high temperatures across the UK and now face the prospect of weeks of drought to add to their discomfort. And this is just the beginning, insists McGuire, who is emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London. As he makes clear in…

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Climate deniers attack weather forecasters during UK heatwave

Climate deniers attack weather forecasters during UK heatwave

BBC News reports: Weather forecasters faced unprecedented levels of trolling during this month’s extreme heat in the UK, according to leading figures in the industry. The BBC’s team received hundreds of abusive tweets or emails questioning their reports and telling them to “get a grip”, as temperatures hit 40C. BBC meteorologist Matt Taylor said he had never experienced anything like it in nearly 25 years working in weather. The Royal Meteorological Society condemned the trolling. Most of the abuse seems…

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U.S. power companies secretly spending millions to protect profits and fight clean energy

U.S. power companies secretly spending millions to protect profits and fight clean energy

The Guardian reports: The CEO of the biggest power company in the US had a problem. A Democratic state senator was proposing a law that could cut into Florida Power & Light’s (FPL) profits. Landlords would be able to sell cheap rooftop solar power directly to their tenants – bypassing FPL and its monopoly on electricity. “I want you to make his life a living hell … seriously,” FPL’s CEO Eric Silagy wrote in a 2019 email to two of…

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What’s in the ‘total game changer’ climate bill nobody saw coming

What’s in the ‘total game changer’ climate bill nobody saw coming

Vox reports: Democrats may be on the verge of passing historic climate legislation after all. The $369 billion of climate spending in the Inflation Reduction Act that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) announced on Wednesday includes funding for clean energy and electric vehicle tax breaks, domestic manufacturing of batteries and solar panels, and pollution reduction. If the bill’s policies work as intended, it would push American consumers and industry away from reliance on fossil fuels, penalize fossil fuel companies for excess…

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Inside the UK’s Silicon Valley for nuclear fusion, where unlimited energy is becoming a reality

Inside the UK’s Silicon Valley for nuclear fusion, where unlimited energy is becoming a reality

BBC Science Focus reports: Flick through any collection of popular science magazines from the last 50 years and the chances are that you will encounter a feature about nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion is the process of joining lightweight atoms together to release energy; it is the reason the Sun and the rest of the stars shine, and recreating that process on Earth promises an abundant form of low-carbon energy. As you look through the archival material, keep an eye open…

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How is the jet stream connected to simultaneous heat waves across the globe?

How is the jet stream connected to simultaneous heat waves across the globe?

The Financial Times (via Inside Climate News) reports: The deadly heat waves that have fueled blazes and caused transport disruptions in Europe, the U.S. and China this month have one thing in common: a peculiar shape in the jet stream dubbed “wavenumber 5.” Scientists are racing to understand whether the band of fast-moving air that controls weather in the mid-latitudes is changing in a way that makes heat waves more frequent and persistent. “The jet stream is the leading driver…

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The Middle East is being confronted with the devastating impact of climate change

The Middle East is being confronted with the devastating impact of climate change

The Associated Press reports: Temperatures in the Middle East have risen far faster than the world’s average in the past three decades. Precipitation has been decreasing, and experts predict droughts will come with greater frequency and severity. The Middle East is one of the most vulnerable regions in the world to the impact of climate change — and already the effects are being seen. In Iraq, intensified sandstorms have repeatedly smothered cities this year, shutting down commerce and sending thousands…

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Extreme heat makes pregnancy more dangerous

Extreme heat makes pregnancy more dangerous

Yale Climate Connections reports: Esther Sanchez’s pregnancy this summer has coincided with extreme heat in Madrid, Spain, where she lives. Overnight temperatures there have been particularly uncomfortable. One recent morning, her living room was still 88 degrees Fahrenheit [31 C] at 6 a.m. “So it was impossible to sleep and to rest and have a normal day — a normal life,” she said. For many pregnant people — a group that can include women, girls, transgender men, and nonbinary people…

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Climate change is not negotiable

Climate change is not negotiable

In an editorial, the New York Times says: The American West has gone bone dry, the Great Salt Lake is vanishing and water levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the two great life-giving reservoirs on the Colorado River basin, are declining with alarming speed. Wildfires are incinerating crops in France, Spain, Portugal and Italy, while parts of Britain suffocated last week in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Yet the news from Washington was all about the ability of a…

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How preventing unwanted pregnancies can help on climate

How preventing unwanted pregnancies can help on climate

Robert N. Proctor and Londa Schiebinger write: Every year, some 36 billion tons of anthropogenic carbon enter the atmosphere, mainly as a result of burning fossil fuels. With 8 billion people on Earth, this means that each human adds an average of 4.5 tons of carbon into the air annually. And wealthy people have a far bigger footprint than the poor — by a couple orders of magnitude. Too often ignored in devising solutions to slow global warming is the…

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We are moving into an era defined by homesickness

We are moving into an era defined by homesickness

Madeline Ostrander writes: From above, an open-cut coal mine looks like some geological aberration, a sort of man-made desert, a recent volcanic eruption, or a kind of terra forming. When the Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht first gazed at a series of such mines while driving through his home region in southeast Australia, he stopped and got out of his car, overcome “at the desolation of this once beautiful place,” he wrote in his book, Earth Emotions. As a scholar, Albrecht…

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Vatican calls for immediate end to fossil fuels, bold action from world leaders ahead of COP27

Vatican calls for immediate end to fossil fuels, bold action from world leaders ahead of COP27

The Planetary Press reports: The Vatican is calling for an immediate phase-out of fossil fuels. A top Vatican official has signaled support for an agreement to cease fossil fuel expansion and phase-out existing production. During a press conference centered around Pope Francis’ World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, Cardinal Michael Czerny, Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, endorsed the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, an initiative that aims to spur global support for a binding…

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War and warming upend global energy supplies and amplify suffering

War and warming upend global energy supplies and amplify suffering

The New York Times reports: Deadly heat and Russia’s war in Ukraine are packing a brutal double punch, upending the global energy market and forcing some of the world’s largest economies into a desperate scramble to secure electricity for their citizens. This week, Europe found itself in a nasty feedback loop as record temperatures sent electricity demand soaring but also forced sharp cuts in power from nuclear plants in the region because the extreme heat made it difficult to cool…

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The deadly connections between climate change and migration

The deadly connections between climate change and migration

Yale Climate Connections spoke with UCLA anthropologist Jason De León: Yale Climate Connections: What are the main drivers of undocumented migration across the U.S.-Mexico border? Jason De León: The primary reasons that people attempt undocumented migrations include poverty, political instability, violence of different forms, famine, a devaluation of currency, and, increasingly, climate change. You’ve got people who are fleeing places like western Mexico because of droughts. They’re fleeing places like Honduras because of the intensity and frequency of hurricanes that…

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Biden announces modest steps to fight climate’s ‘clear and present danger’

Biden announces modest steps to fight climate’s ‘clear and present danger’

Politico reports: President Joe Biden sought to keep his faltering climate change agenda alive Wednesday after bruising defeats in Congress and at the Supreme Court, and he vowed to take matters into his own hands as heatwave records topple in the U.S. and Europe and his climate goals drift further out of reach. For now, those steps will be modest: Biden’s administration will clear the way for new offshore wind energy in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean, he…

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